Jill Biden doesn’t like public speaking. And she really doesn’t like politics.

She had attended only two fundraisers on her own and didn’t headline campaign rallies until mid-September. She’s continued to teach community college full-time and isn’t skipping classes to campaign.

But as the race enters the final stretch, Team Obama is deploying her to do more. On weekends, at least.

“We want as much of her time as we can get,” senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said.

Biden is the least well-known of the marquee four at the White House and the least polished campaigner. She’s still finding her voice and comfort zone on the trail as she works through some awkward — and unexpected — moments before crowds.

But Axelrod said she brings an asset to the trail the others don’t — she’s an English teacher with a stepson who served in Iraq, real-world experiences that she has in common with voters.

The campaign plans to use her to connect with teachers, veterans, members of the military and their families, and women, an especially critical voting bloc for President Barack Obama in November.

She has yet to campaign on her own in some of the biggest battleground states, including Ohio, Florida and Virginia. During her first solo foray last month, she appeared at grass-roots events in field offices and colleges in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And on Monday, she wrapped up a series of closed-door fundraisers during a swing through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas.

“She is as grounded and as normal a person as you can find,” Axelrod said. “I think the fact that she’s not someone who feels that comfortable at the front of a room speaking — unless they’re students — speaks to who she is. She is really genuine.”

While Vice President Joe Biden is known for his authenticity as well — and for draping his arms around strangers at various venues, including bikers at a diner — the two could not be more different on the trail.

At recent events in New Hampshire, Jill Biden read rather stiffly from a set of prepared remarks while he riffed off points listed on a notecard. And while her husband visibly relished greeting people along a rope line at a Teamsters hall, taking nearly 15 minutes to stop for pictures and the proverbial kissing of babies, she blew through the same line in two minutes and 20 seconds. Aides say she rushed off to meet a group of teachers waiting for her backstage. The vice president also spent time backstage, taking pictures, after working the rope line.

Her stump speech at a Women-for-Obama canvass kickoff focused on many of the same points the Obamas and the vice president hit with similar audiences: the president’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help women fight for equal pay and his appointment of a record number of women to Cabinet-level posts and the federal bench, including two female Supreme Court justices.

“I want to ask you to give everything you can for Barack and Joe between now and Election Day,” she said, then added, “Obviously, you’re doing that or you wouldn’t be here this morning.”

A day earlier, she introduced her husband to a college audience — and inadvertently cracked up the crowd when she said, “I‘ve seen Joe up close.”

Jill Biden grimaced and joined in the laughter. “It’s in my remarks, really,” she said.

She introduced her husband at the Democratic National Convention as well. But in solo events, she is taking on the responsibility of speaking for the ticket as a whole.

“I want to tell you why I’m involved. And I know you probably think, ‘Of course you’re involved, you’re the wife of the vice president,’ but really, even if I weren’t the wife of the vice president, I would be involved in this campaign because really, there’s so much at stake,” she said at the New Hampshire canvass kickoff, where she also tackled one of the campaign’s mantras. “Barack and Joe are also working hard on the economy. They are building an economy that works for everybody, not just those at the top.”

Like first lady Michelle Obama, the second lady typically doesn’t directly attack Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan or the Republican Party, nor does she use veiled references like “some people” or “the other side.”

Aides, who declined to make Biden available for an interview, said that’s her choice — it’s not her style and would wade a little too deep into the rough-and-tumble world of politics.

As she ventures more boldly into that world, she is bringing her trademark discipline to the task.

Not satisfied with just one college degree, she went on to earn two masters and then a doctorate, all while raising three children. She started running at age 40, then worked her way to completing a marathon.

She has been known to clip out inspirational quotes and tape them to the bathroom mirror. Her sister-in-law said that on New Year’s Eve in 2008 — on the eve of the Iowa caucuses that would end her husband’s bid for the presidency — she pulled out a whiteboard and asked family members to write out resolutions for the year.

“I wouldn’t say that she’s a perfectionist. I would say that she’s a striver, an achiever to try and do the best,” sister-in-law Valerie Biden Owens said.

Biden feels comfortable in smaller groups, particularly those she has a connection with, said Sheila Casey, a military families advocate who traveled with Biden to Fort Stewart, Ga., to meet with family members of fallen troops.

“She has such a wonderful touch with people that they connect to her, and they don’t connect with her because she’s the wife of the vice president, they connect to her because she shares herself with them,” Casey said.

She also has a sense of humor that the public rarely sees, according to family members and aides. Biden Owens recalled one official trip when tired aides were preparing to head home to Washington. Biden snuck onto the plane before them and crawled into an overhead luggage bin above the seat of an aide who was bringing a carry-on bag.

“She stashes herself up there, and when this person comes, she goes, ‘Boo!’ Well, the person about has a coronary,” Biden Owens said.

When Biden met her husband, she was teaching high school and he was a U.S. senator from Delaware whose wife and 13-month-old daughter had been killed in a car crash a few years earlier. She fell in love with him, but his involvement in politics gave her pause. He often tells the story about how he had to ask her five times before she agreed to marry him.

“She did not want to be the wife of a U.S. senator,” recalled Ted Kaufman, a longtime friend of the family and former chief of staff for Joe Biden.

Once she agreed, she picked causes she felt a connection with — breast cancer, for example, because four friends had been diagnosed with it and one had died. She started working on her public speaking skills, methodically, by gradually increasing the size of the crowds she addressed.

“She said, ‘I’m not going to let my fear stop me,’” Kaufman said. “It was going to a group of 10, then a group of 20, then a group of 60.”

When Barack Obama picked her husband for the ticket in 2008, Jill Biden got a call from former second lady Tipper Gore, who told her not to change who she is; just be herself. Biden told Parade Magazine last year that she met with Gore more than once and followed her advice.

She has carefully selected her appearances, again sticking to causes she feels strongly about.

After her stepson, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, was sent with the Army National Guard to serve in Iraq, she became passionately involved in advocating for military families, joining with the first lady to draw attention to the issue. She wrote a children’s book, “Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops,” inspired by the impact Beau Biden’s deployment had on his young family.

At the event she headlined in Manchester, N.H., recently, roughly 60 Obama volunteers, mainly women, crammed into a small, second-floor campaign office. They applauded when she spoke about her stepson’s deployment and how she understands the importance of caring for veterans. She said that is a top priority for Obama. Attendees said in interviews that seeing Jill Biden was a bonus — they had signed up to come for training on door-knocking.

“I love that she came, and that she’s coming to a small, little gathering, you know, in her busy life,” retired school teacher Jackie Wood said. Wood, a neighborhood team leader for the Obama campaign in Auburn, N.H., added that Biden’s awkwardness showed a vulnerability she finds endearing.